Bessie Fairfax loved this spot with a peculiar affection. Beyond the ford went a footpath, skirting the river, to the village of Brook, where young Musgrave lived--a footpath overshadowed by such giant fir trees, such beeches and vast oaks as are nowhere else in England. The Great Ash was a storm-riven fragment, but its fame continued, and its beauty in sufficient picturesqueness for artistic purposes. Many a painter had made the old russet farmhouse his summer lodging; and one was sketching now where the water had dried in its pebbly bed, and the adventurous little bare feet of Jack and Willie Carnegie were tempting an imaginary peril in quest of the lily which still whitened the stream under the bank. It was not often that Bessie, with the children alone, wandered so far afield. But the day had beguiled them, and a furtive hope that Harry Musgrave might be coming to Beechhurst that way had given Bessie courage. He had not been met, however, when it was time to turn their faces towards home. The boys had their forest pony, and mounted him by turns. It was Tom's turn now, and Bessie was leading Jerry, and carrying the socks and boots of the other two in the skirt of her frock, gathered up in one hand. She was a little subdued, a little downcast, it might be with fatigue and the sultry air, or it might be with her present disappointment; but beyond and above all wearied sensations was the jar of unsettledness that had come into her life, and perplexed and confused all its sweet simplicities. She made no haste, but lingered, and let the children linger as they pleased. The path by the river was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes. Thus it befell to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up. They were drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and stockings as the strangers rode by. "Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?" quoth the elder of the two, drawing rein for a moment. Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair. "Yes, sir," said she. Then a sudden intelligence gleamed in her eyes, her cheeks blazed more hotly, and she thought to herself, "It is my grandfather!" The gentlemen proceeded some hundred paces in silence, and then the one whom Bessie suspected as her grandfather said to the other, "Short, that is the girl herself! She has the true Fairfax face as it is painted in a score of our old portraits." "I believe you are right, sir. Let us be certain--let us ask her name," proposed the lawyer.